Soft Tissue Damage
by Lys ap Adin
Summary: Another metaphor wouldn't be as appropriate. Yamamoto & Gokudera; a stylized, second-person little drabble.


**Title:** Soft-Tissue Damage**  
>Pairings:<strong> Yamamoto & Gokudera**  
>Summary:<strong> Another metaphor wouldn't be as appropriate.**  
>Notes:<strong> General audiences; stylized & second-person. 1238 words.

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><p><strong>Soft-Tissue Damage<strong>

Do you ever think about bruises? he asks, which comes out of nowhere at all, a complete non sequitur. He's sitting in the window, one leg drawn up and propped carelessly against the frame, and he's got his head leaning back against the casement. The sun's going down; the red of the sky turns him into a silhouette.

For some reason you put your pen down and look at him, wondering what the fresh hell this is and where he's going to take it. It annoys you sometimes—no, let's be honest, all the time—how you find yourself humoring these strange whims of his, but even when you're snarling at him for being such a waste of good oxygen, you can't help being interested somehow.

No, you tell him, you can't say that you spend any of your precious time thinking about _bruises_, of all things.

He ignores the hint and stretches out one of his hands, holding it out in front of him and flexing it, first this way and then that. He's taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. You can see that there's a dark, mottled band across his forearm, which reminds you that you heard someone say that he's been over to visit the Varia again. That explains that. You could ask him yourself, if you wanted to be sure or know why, but he's a grown man. It's not your job to keep track of his comings and goings. Not that you would, even if it were. Not this guy, who actively drives you crazy on a regular basis. You know he enjoys it; why else would he haunt your office the way he's doing right now, appropriating your furniture and your window like he doesn't have a perfectly good office of his own right down the hall?

Bruises are funny, he tells you, still stretching his hand out, looking at it.

You think the bruise looks like a bad one, purple-black against his skin; it must ache every time he twists his arm and rotates his wrist back and forth, but he doesn't seem to notice. He never seems to notice such things. Never takes them seriously.

You tell him he's crazy and he just laughs that cheerful gurgling way he has, the one that absolutely infuriates you. You wonder whether he would get the hint and go away if you threw something at him, but there's nothing on your desk that would make a good projectile or that you're willing to part with. He'd duck anyway, and then you'd have to explain the damage to the window again.

You ask him whether he has a point to this inanity instead, because you do have work to do (unlike _some_ people you could name) and you'd quite like to get it taken care of so you can go ahead and call it a day.

I like bruises, he says, settling his hand on his drawn-up knee and turning his head to look out at the burning sky. Even though they're funny.

Well, you say, vindicated at last, I always did figure you for a masochist.

He laughs again, softer, the sound faintly rueful, and agrees that he must be.

You watch him in spite of yourself, even though really you want nothing more than to wrap up for the day, go home and unwind with a glass of good wine and a book and maybe a little music on the stereo. You hate how you find your eyes drawn to him all the damn time, but you keep doing it. Just now you are watching the heedless curve of his back juxtaposed with the sharp angle of his knee and the loose splay of his fingers, all of it lit by the glow of the light that rolls in through the window, rose and sunset gold.

Why do you like bruises? You don't really mean to ask him, but the question itches under your skin, planted there by his ramblings and refusing to be exorcised except by this.

God only knows whether he's going to answer. He has his moods, strange and unfathomable, and it's not always possible to make sense of them when they take him. It's the truly frustrating thing about him. Each time that you think that this is it, this time, you've finally figured him out, mapped all the things he is so that you can put the resolved puzzle of him aside at last, he shows you a new facet of himself, some unexplored mood or habit to leave you stymied by the kaleidoscope of his personality once again.

This time he says more, though it leaves you more confused than enlightened.

There are all kinds of bruises, he tells you, slow and thoughtful. There are the ones you don't even feel and that surprise you every time you see them, and the ones that ache all the time, and the ones that only bother you when you think about it or poke them or something.

You lean your chin against your fist and ask if this is what he spends his time thinking about. If it is, then it's just one more example of how strange he really is, of how that bluff, cheerful face he shows the world is merely a façade with which he fools people.

You're not fooled by it. Not anymore.

Of course he ignores you. He does _that_ a lot, too.

All kinds of bruises, he says again, looking out the window again. He adds, You're a bruise, too, you know.

The fuck, you say, more because you're confounded by this than offended (for the moment). _I'm_ a bruise?

His voice is quiet when he says that yeah, you are.

He's just dangling the bait now, waiting for you to rise to it, but even knowing that's what he's doing, you break the long silence between the two of you to ask him _how_ you're a bruise. What does that even _mean_?

You're one of the bruises you can't see, he says.

His tone is distant, slow—almost dreamy. You'd suspect him of being drunk or something, but he's been sitting in your window for an hour or so now, distracting you from your work, and you don't think it's that.

Right over the bone, he murmurs, where it aches the most.

Then he looks around and smiles at you. He looks amused and regretful all at once. Only you never heal, he adds, and it never stops aching.

It's ridiculous, you think, looking at him. _He's_ ridiculous. The whole thing is preposterous. And yet you're not surprised; he's a preposterous kind of person, the kind you never believed could actually exist until you met him.

_This_, you say, _this_ is how you do this? You compare me to a fucking _injury_? Am I supposed to be flattered by this?

He just smiles at you and tells you that he knows you don't like flattery, and wouldn't believe it anyway. But, he adds, I thought you should know.

Like it's just that easy.

It's not the first time you've told him that he's an idiot and it won't be the last, and yet he keeps on smiling, which disarms you despite your best intentions. So you point out the problem with his so-charming metaphor: Bruises fade.

Not this one, he says.

God help you both, you believe him.

**end**

As always, comments are lovely!


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